GRE Issue Task 3

I made this issue myself.

The existence of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter has led to various criminal acts, especially to teenagers. Therefore, such sites should be banned completely from the Internet.

The speaker stated that social networking sites should be abolished for its risking the safety of us and our family. I assert that this strong opposition is based on tangible reasons, but stripping these sites from our life forever is unnecessary. In that case, I propose the idea that this risk is preventable and we can live side by side with them in peace if we know how to do it.

To begin with, I will provide you with a brief elaboration on what “risk” means in this issue. Some people believe that as you joined these sites, you exposed your identity. Facebook is full of advertisements craving for not only the users’ eyeballs, but also specific details about them—yes, about you! These preys have a wide range of tricks to manipulate you to give them your identity as well as your friends’. There are those fascinating applications, namely quizzes, games, and groups who can obtain an access to your profile and use it for their ends. I think it is still insignificant, of course, when their intentions are to use this information as their research for a new product or to attack you with a whole lots of other product campaigns. The problem is what about if such tricks are used by deliberate villains? These malign individuals might find out where their potential victims live, when they go to school, what do they like, and then they might create a perfect plan to lure them out to the real world. That is how we ended up having a portion of undesirable news about kidnapping, rape, fraud, and even murder stemmed from these sites some people cannot live without.

As a counter-attack, I would like to point that Facebook has a privacy setting, as well as other sites in this category do. Any member can protect themselves from anyone, including those in her own Facebook friend list, prohibiting undesired and unexpected parties to take a peek on her photos, notes, profile information, and others. Even if you do not touch the privacy setting, you do not have to share genuine specific information about yourselves. Just use a nickname and go tell your friends that it is you by the private message service or when you see them offline. In addition, the applications’ sharing your identity always asks your permission to do it. If you want to be safe, you can simply ignore them.

Nevertheless, I regret to admit that some users are not aware of this rule, and hence their very private identities are viable to random people. This incognizance is caused by the complicated items in the privacy setting. These ignoramuses just want to have some fun, and reading the “cryptic” explanation hurts their delicate brains. Another possibility is they do not have any idea that this setting exists because there are those young users interacting in Facebook or Friendster as their first online experience.

What should be done, then? The U.S. Senators have urged Facebook to simplify their rules and setting, but it is not only the Facebook administrator team’s job to ensure our young people are safe. Parents and teachers have the same obligation to raise online safety awareness among teenagers, to explain the rules and consequences to them, and to forbid those under sixteen years old to maintain an account in these sites. In the end of the day, social networking sites will remain exist with minimum risk.

Facebook

Again I wrote it last night on 23.30 pm GMT+7

It’s another bleak night with a hungry belly, stiff neck, and tired knees, but I’m grateful that my spine is fine. Something’s wrong with the gas stove that I can’t ignite it, thereby I can’t cook anything. To make things worse, my current translation project is still killing me. I only have 42 more pages to go, but I know that a long and complicated correction will be needed. So now I’m running away by writing about something I like the most.

Facebook is a brilliant invention. I wasn’t really fascinated by Friendster, but I’ve spent the whole 2009 on Facebooking. I made my Facebook account on late August 2008, but I started using it frequently subsequent to my undergraduate thesis defense in the following December. The biggest incentive was my latest mobile phone which allowed me to be online whenever and wherever. Soon I found myself addicted to this social network site, and it’s fun.

Undoubtly, Facebook played an important role in my social life during 2009. I reunited with many old friends, made new friends, and became closer to some others. However, my favorite part was people’s tendency to share their private life in Facebook. Following their status updates was fun, sometimes it’s similar to reading romances. Moreover, owing to the fact that I have such a deep curiosity over other people’s business, I used to wander about my friends’ profiles. I’ve managed to find out the girl he had a crush on or the new boyfriend she had but didn’t want to share.

Well, the greatest thing about Facebook is it doesn’t share page views information. Therefore, I can blissfully haunting my friends. I refered myself as a Facebook ghoul. Once my friend even predicated me as a Facebook detective after I had told her how to gain a specific information by using Facebook. Hence, I know more than they think I do, but not rarely I have to pretend to be don’t because they might be afraid of me, hahaha.

In consequence, Facebook took a great proportion of my time. It decreased my working effectivity and efficiency significantly. Today is the seventh day I live without mobile phone Facebooking. Even I stayed at home for 3 days without any touch with Facebook. I did go to the internet café to open my Facebook account during the last 3 days, but overall, I visited Facebook drastically less often since I couldn’t access it from my mobile phone.

But I still love Facebook, and I hope people will not leave it, being more attracted to Twitter or Plurk or MySpace. Actually, blogging is another hot stuff, but less people will create one, let alone post something to it consistently. By the way, if you don’t know me in person, I don’t recommend you to add my Facebook account. On the contrary, my Twitter account is open to everyone. Anyway, I have to remind you that I usually write there in Indonesian, not English.

Avoiding "Particular" Friends in Facebook

I had to figure out how to prevent their interferences in my facebook life...


Yesterday my facebook friend B complained in his status that one of his friends had deleted him from his/her friend list. I offered him a possibility that it was simply because he/she might just doesn’t know him personally. But B insisted that they know each other and he knows every single person in his facebook friend list. Actually, he was wrong. We don’t know each other. I had mistaken him for other friend with similar name in the same school and he believed me to be one of his almost forgotten English course old fella. Haha, hey Mr. B, please don’t delete me since we have many mutual friends, let’s just be friends from now on ^^

It reminded me of some cases where removing someone from the friend list happened. The first time it happened to me was done by a girl from USA. I just wanted to make friends with her. I thought she wouldn’t be afraid to someone looks like a little girl like me (oh, really? Hahaha). But she deleted me after a brief chat. I didn’t mind at all. I had already understood that parents in the USA and Great Britain always warn their children about having friends in the internet (trust me, I’ve read loads of young adults novels). Now I have some friends from other countries and we’re doing okay, ahaha.

First time I delete someone from my friend list happened a few months ago. He was Mr. A and I don’t know him personally. He added me from my neighbor’s account. I thought he’d wanted to be my friend since he commented several times on my status. But then I teased him on something and he got mad. He shouted at me. After leaving a little “I’m sorry” message, I deleted him. Whew. In fact, I deleted him directly to avoid him deleted me earlier. Ahahaha.

The second one was Mr. R in disguise. Well, we never really had a relationship, but I admitted that we were close. When we “broke up”, I swore him that it was my last message. He didn’t use his real name when he added me. There were no personal picture, only cartoon and various kinds of coffees. Then when he said, “Hi, M. This is me, R,” As reading it, I wanted to scream. Despite of his marital status, I’m still afraid of him until now. So I reminded him that my “last message” was really meant to be one. Then I deleted him *sigh*. His last words were “conceit cannot be beaten even after years”. Ooooh, I don’t care. I was afraid >_<

Lately I found myself feeling uncomfortable with some of my friends in facebook. But I realized that it might become such a pain (= problem) if I deleted them. So I had to figure out how to prevent their interferences in my facebook life. Suddenly my friend H disappeared from facebook. He deactivated his account (but then came back in a few days). That’s when I found out the “settings” icon (yeah, my facebook knowledge development was slow). Since then I set the privacy settings, especially blocking my status updates to be seen by those persons. I can also stop any kinds of notifications about them in my home. Sometimes I also block particular notes from particular persons. And no more facebook notification emails (I let a few still though).

Fewer disputes follow less contact. Now I have a more peaceful facebook life. Please have a try :)